Secret Areas

Well, so hello. I'm new here (been lurking for a while though). Anyway, I'm a huge fan of hidden or secret areas in levels. However, what purpose do they really serve? I suppose one could place power-ups or keys in secret areas but for what? To unlock more secret areas (or endings). One could also place power-ups not normally attainable to make the level easier or some such or to gain access to other hidden areas. In Dark Sky of Wish Mountain they didn't really seem to serve a purpose. Just places to explore I guess.

I'm kind of asking this question with my work-in-progress level in mind. I love secret areas and maps to explore but other than being fun to find, is there a point? In the level I made before (didn't quite finish), they contained hints about how to (eventually) get to the secret ending.

I'm just wondering what others think. What is a good use of secret areas/maps? Power-ups? Keys? Hints? Just for fun? Other?

For me, the optimal secret areas are the ones that mix a little bit of humor with some kind of more tangible reward to the player. I haven't done many levels, but two of them had secret areas. One is a reference to another game, with a bunch of power ups that actually break the level. This is a terrible idea most of the time, but I knew that it was very unlikely that someone would find that area unless I pointed out that it existed. In another level I have a secret room that doesn't fit the environment of the level at all, and I found it a bit amusing, and as a reward I offered the detector. Somewhat useful, but shouldn't break anything in the level.

I always feel a bit cheated when I feel that there is a secret area that is only barely accessible, but when I get there there's no reward at all, like deliberately placed void screens with some witty message. Your idea of a hint to a better ending seems perfect, as that gives the player a useful reward.

I suppose the definition of secret areas may differ a bit depending on who you ask. I have a level in progress with more hidden areas where the keys are located, but I wouldn't call them secret areas as those keys are essential to get to the best endings.

The definition of a secret area is a reward to the player for being able to find an area that is not obvious. Either visual clues or just plain trying are the key to get there.

Usually the message "You've found a secret" is enough to reward the player. Add something extra like some custom art, some music or anything else special, and the player will search your entire level to find more.

In older games, secrets often give you items to boost the score, and although most gamers don't really care to boost the score, they like it anyway.

Other things could be ammo or health, but those obviously won't work with Knytt stories. You could give something to make your level easier, but then you have to design your level with that in mind. For instance, make every jump possible without double jump and high jump, and then you can give either or both in secret areas to make it easier.

If you're good with flags you could make a secret room with a computer in it that will change the difficulty of your level by the press of a button. It could make certain lasers not to go on, or add platforms so certain jumps become easier.

A secret area is usually good enough if it just has something that feels different from the rest.

If your level is story-heavy, you could have parts of it that aren't essential but still interesting in secret areas. If the level is explorative instead, you could put warps in them to travel to other far away areas. For linear levels, you could implement (via flags) a secret area counter that is shown at the end to tell the player how many s/he's missed.

Finding hidden/secret areas is rewarding to players because they have achieved something. The most important aspect of this is to communicate to the player that they have accomplished something beyond the basic play through. This communication is typically made with loot, knowledge, or humor.

Loot is the most difficult to achieve in Knytt Stories because the game lacks any items that don't directly affect gameplay. The keys are the closest we have, but making them hidden items drastically reduces your ability as level designer to control the flow of the game.

Hidden knowledge, typically takes the form of additional back-story or side-story to the main plot. To use this effectively in you'd need to have a main plot or at least a reason known to you, the level designer, for the circumstances of the game. A consideration you'll have to make with this method is that players may only find some of this information, and they may not find it in a certain order.

Humor, is the easiest to implement. Even if a game is completely serious, it's acceptable to hide bits of humor. Often times the humor is obscure or unrelated to the game, like the presence of rubber ducks. The sense that it doesn't belong helps to communicate to the player that they have discovered something above the typical experience.

Something I like to do, is to number the hidden areas so that the player knows how many more secrets there are to discover, and they can make finding secrets an additional goal to achieve. Then, they can feel a little satisfaction each time they discover one, and a lot of satisfaction if they find them all.

A final consideration, is that the joy of finding a secret is far outweighed by the disappointment of finding a void in KS. If your method of hiding things relies on the difficulty of getting to them, players will quickly tire of looking for them if they manage to enter voids instead. They wont know what's worth the effort and what isn't. So, make sure your level is tested thoroughly.

Note: AA posted while I was writing. Many of his points are similar to mine, but I'm going to publish what I wrote anyway.

An alternative to giving power-ups: take them out to make the level more difficult, or replace high jump with double jump for example.
In my Ball Tutorial I went crazy and added 2 very special endings to secret areas. That is not counting the "official" secret ending for which there are hints in the level. The 2 new endings are in places I thought of as unreachable. I ended up reaching every "unreachable" place in the level Since I had ideas for nice secret endings, I added 2 endings in these places, even though I knew almost no-one will be able to reach them.
What I don't like are secrets for which there are no clues at all, like when some tile can be passed through and to discover it legitimately you need to go to every corner of the level.
I like secrets in hard-to-reach places or places where a player wouldn't normally go, like jumping off a cliff. These places usually happen to be created naturally, all you need is find them and turn from voids/wallswims into secret areas
Dark Sea incorporates secret ending very nicely. There certain things hint at existence of something extra and logic helps in finding it. I did a similar thing, although much more obvious, with Ball Tutorial's "official" secret ending. I was very pleased when it worked.

What I don't like are secrets for which there are no clues at all, like when some tile can be passed through and to discover it legitimately you need to go to every corner of the level.

That could be frustrating, but also fun in some ways, because it rewards players for thinking outside the box (ie. some kind of hacking/cheating, in this case, using the editor). GoldenEye 64 had a secret area accessible this way; if you had a GameShark to mess with the game, you could access a secret island in the first level, never meant to be found the regular way. The area itself wasn't anything special, but the thrill of discovery was enough of a treat, imo. Banjo-Tooie was another game with several hidden places that one could never get to without some cheats, but this one actually had some unique stuff with it too, like cinematics and items.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Personally, I agree with the overall thoughts everyone else had (how original of me). Secret areas should contain something: rewards, back-story, whatever. I won't spoiler anything about my level's secrets except to say there is a level-wide secret. It will be a story-based exploration level so that should give you some clue about what it might be.